After killing the usurper Pelias, Jason and Medea flee to live in Corinth. But he is offered the hand of Glauce, so abandons Medea, and their lives fall apart.
Dadd
The devil’s darning needles have had a bad press, and appear in just a few paintings. Here’s a vanitas still life, a meal for chaffinches, and some stranger associations.
Worn by the figure of death to obscure its face, as a cowl on a monk’s robes, in religious and academic uniforms, as a chaperon on Dante, and for the traveller when migrating.
Axes for human sacrifice, execution, demolition of a bridge to save the city of Rome, as symbols of authority leading to Fascism, and cleaving a hazelnut for fairies.
With ancient origins, and relatively unusual in wooden panels, round canvases became popular in the Renaissance. Examples by Raphael, Poussin, Tiepolo, Girodet, Richard Dadd and others.
At the end of the Golden Age, he specialised in painting the Dark Arts, with astrology, rejuvenation, witchcraft, and faerie allegories.
Venus born surrounded by colourful fish, in the element water, in a feeding frenzy by Turner’s Slave Ship, with mermaids, and brought ashore ready to eat.
A dance to the music of time, the hours, Muses, sirens, winged putti, faeries, maidens fearing death, mid-summer feasts and folk dancing.
Popularised with large-format colour printing in the middle of the 19th century, there appear in several paintings where they contribute to the reading.
Beauties by William Holman Hunt, Gustave Doré, Bruno Liljefors, Vincent van Gogh, Odilon Redon, Richard Dadd and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 